**AGNES of Orlamünde.** — A Cistercian nun, most famous in the German legend of the White Lady (*"weisse Frau"*), born in an unspecified year to the family of the dukes of Merania, and married to Otto III of Orlamünde. After her husband’s death she imprudently conceived a passion for Albert of Nuremberg, for whose sake she did not hesitate to kill her two sons. The remorse for these crimes pursued her and drove her to turn to God and to make amends through works of piety. In 1280 she founded the Cistercian monastery of Himmelskron in the diocese of Bamberg (Bavaria), of which she was elected abbess and where, it is said, she attained a high degree of spiritual perfection, dying in 1343. She is also said to have possessed the gift of prophecy, if the legend of the White Lady is to be credited, for she foretold the great fortune of the Hohenzollerns. She had no cult, or if any was paid to her, it was not recognized by the Church. The legend recounting her life presents variants of some importance, to which the panegyrists and genealogists of the Hohenzollerns were not strangers (cf. A. Bigelmar, s. V. in LThK, I, cols. 140-41).
**AGNES of Poitiers, Saint.** — A 6th-century abbess whose feast is celebrated on 13 May. Educated by Queen Radegund, Agnes became the first abbess of the monastery of Saint-Croix, founded in Poitiers by the aforementioned queen shortly after the middle of the 6th century. Owing to the opposition of Maroveus, bishop of Poitiers, Radegund and Agnes introduced, around 570, the Rule of Saint Caesarius of Arles into the new monastery. Agnes’s friendly relations with the poet Venantius Fortunatus are well known. She died before 589.